Documents: Altered Parent Trigger Rescission Forms

Here's one of the parent rescissions that Parent Revolution claims were forged or altered by the California Teachers Association or perhaps district administrators. Basically, Parent Revolution is claiming that someone has altered petitions to make it seem like parents are saying they were misled, submitted unsigned rescision documents, and failed to retain or provide original documents for review. See below for different versions of the documents to compare.

Meanwhile, the Florida parent trigger bill is being fought over tooth and nail (led by former Clinton 2008 staffer Mike Trujillo). The Senate committee passed the legislation, sending it to the full Senate. Lots of Dems switching from "for" to "against" under NEA pressure, I'm told.

For what it's worth, my main interest in the parent trigger is as a sign of parent frustration and political opportunity (can you say "debate question"?) than as a specific mechanism for school improvement. Policy wonks generally dislike the trigger -- so messy, and not their pet idea -- and to be fair it's probably not brilliant policymaking, or even necessary except in extreme circumstances. But those do exist, we all have to admit, and arguing that parents are too dumb or that the trigger is too democratic seems obnoxious to me. We let "uninformed" people vote all the time. Why should schools be different?

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Alexander,

Thanks for the parent trigger update. I was concerned, though, about your characterization of opposition to it. I don't know of anyone who claims that "parents are too dumb or that the trigger is too democratic." There are many, many other reasons to oppose it, which I have written about extensively here:

Parent Revolution used this same tactic when its previous Parent Trigger collapsed in chaos and controversy (despite mass gushing by the press initially) in Compton, Calif. They filed charges against teachers charging harassment and civil rights violations and whatever they could come up with, shrieking hysterically all the way. As far as I can find out, all those charges (which made screaming headlines at the time)have all been forgotten -- I've been badgering poor John Fensterwald at Educated Guess to please find out and update for us.

Anyone familiar with a school community from the inside (which does not include anyone in Parent Revolution) can see that this process would ignite controversy, divisiveness and anger in the community. Parent Revolution tries to turn that into momentum on its own behalf with all the shrieking about evil evil evil teachers' wrongdoing.

Similarly, Parent Revolution went hysterical about a PowerPoint by a teachers' union in Connecticut describing a lobbying strategy. In each case, it's wrongdoing! Intimidation! The PowerPoint of Doom!

How many times do they got to do this before the press and commentators react with, "D'oh! They're screaming hysterically about criminal wrongdoing AGAIN!"....?